Re: Perpetual Homebrew Thread

Apparently Nigerians bottle their propane at low pressure, which actually makes a lot of sense considering the shoddy safety standards they have here. It looks like my burners are unusable here. I did order a couple of large pots and some insulation and will have to resort to electric stovetop brewing and cooler mashing. It'll be exciting due to the weak power infrastructure I'm bound to end up with 5 gallons of boiling wort in the middle of a pitch black room waiting for the generators to kick in.

It doesn't quite jibe with this thread, but I just ordered bottles to put away a batch of limoncello I made. It's about a liter and a half of Everclear, and the zest of about 18 organic lemons, as well as about a few navel oranges. It's have been steeping in sealed jars for about a year now, buried in the back of my hall closet. Now I have to strain it, measure the volume, and do a 50/50 dilution with simple syrup. It'll still be a bit hot, but that van be remedies in glass with some filtered water on a per user basis.

Limoncello is delicious, and infused liquers are perfectly homebrewy in my mind. Now make some bacon vodka for amazing bloody mary's.

I finally brewed an all grain on my now three year old project to convert a keg to a mash tun. I can be kind of lazy. For a first run it wasn't bad, hit about 75% efficiency. I'd like to set up a more permanent "sabco" brewery in my basement, have plenty of kegs I salvaged from my friends brewery's bad pile. For now though, the keg works fine and definitely holds a ridiculous amount of grain. I mashed 17lbs, and I could have easily doubled that.

Nutrimentia wrote:

Apparently Nigerians bottle their propane at low pressure, which actually makes a lot of sense considering the shoddy safety standards they have here. It looks like my burners are unusable here. I did order a couple of large pots and some insulation and will have to resort to electric stovetop brewing and cooler mashing. It'll be exciting due to the weak power infrastructure I'm bound to end up with 5 gallons of boiling wort in the middle of a pitch black room waiting for the generators to kick in.

Yeah, the regulator is part of the burner, not the tank, and the tank pressure is much higher than needed for operating a burner.

I think what's more likely is you either bought compressed natural gas (CNG) instead of propane, or your "propane" is impure, with a lot of methane and ethane in it (or inert gasses like CO2), and your gas has a lower energy density than LPG.

If you can't get good propane, the solution is to switch out the orifice for a natural gas one. Of course, parts availability might be a problem. You can drill out the orifice but it has to be done very precisely. Maybe you should just buy a burner locally (that will hopefully included the appropriate regulator and orifice for the local fuel)?

brewed an all grain stout on the weekend. wow.. I expected an OG of 1070... The 90 minute mash gave up 1090!! I had to dilute it down some at the end of the boil so I could hit 1070. Very amazed as I had only 7lb of base grain.. I sparged and basically ended up with 7 gallons post boil at 1070 (so 8+ gallons before boil).

Problem was, I ended up with so much I had no more of the same hops (glacier) so I threw in some cascade I think.. oh well. It will probably come out a bit malty and underhopped but we will see...

then I had to scramble and find anything I could for the extra brew to ferment in.

I also opened my vodkas, I've had for about 8 months several jars of vodka, 1 with cucumber, 1 with raspberries, 1 with blueberries. The cucumber was still crunchy and fresh like the day I chopped it up. Very interesting. Very strong and 'shine' like and hot. I don't know if I'd want to drink it. fail there. The raspberries... odd. strong, not a fan.

The blueberry, WOW! smooooooooooth and awesome. Well worth it, this will be done again.

Not sure if 8 months mattered. I left them in the cupboard and ignored them. Same results might come from just 2 weeks, so who knows.

It doesn't quite jibe with this thread, but I just ordered bottles to put away a batch of limoncello I made. It's about a liter and a half of Everclear, and the zest of about 18 organic lemons, as well as about a few navel oranges. It's have been steeping in sealed jars for about a year now, buried in the back of my hall closet. Now I have to strain it, measure the volume, and do a 50/50 dilution with simple syrup. It'll still be a bit hot, but that van be remedies in glass with some filtered water on a per user basis.

awesome. liquers are on the list of 'someday' for me.

Right now, I have the first batch from my Mr. Beer bottled and undergoing carbonation. the kit came with (8) 1L bottles, but I used a mix: 2x 64oz growlers2x 750ml flip-top glass bottles3x 1L screw-top bottles from the kit.

Next up is probably a cider that I got to satisfy the GF's tastebuds, then an all-malt witte.

I figure I'll go with extract brewing with the Mr beer for the summer, then try to upgrade in the fall.

I've got an issue that's kept me from brewing for the past few months, and it's really getting to be obnoxious.

After moving into my girlfriend's rental home, I kept my bubbling fermenters in her closet, as it provided plenty of space and insulation. Unfortunately, this area was also available to her 4-year old daughter, who ended up ruining 3 different batches by depositing crayons, rocks, coins, and whatever she could fit into the carboy.

Needless to say, using the closet is no longer an option.

I've thought about getting a chest freezer & temp controller (or build some kind of fermentation chamber) to keep in the garage. Unfortunately, the one outlet actually in the garage doesn't work, and the landlord isn't interested in repairing it. There's an outlet in the laundry room right next to the garage, but that involves running an extension cord and having the door constantly closing on it.

It doesn't quite jibe with this thread, but I just ordered bottles to put away a batch of limoncello I made. It's about a liter and a half of Everclear, and the zest of about 18 organic lemons, as well as about a few navel oranges. It's have been steeping in sealed jars for about a year now, buried in the back of my hall closet. Now I have to strain it, measure the volume, and do a 50/50 dilution with simple syrup. It'll still be a bit hot, but that van be remedies in glass with some filtered water on a per user basis.

awesome. liquers are on the list of 'someday' for me.

Right now, I have the first batch from my Mr. Beer bottled and undergoing carbonation. the kit came with (8) 1L bottles, but I used a mix: 2x 64oz growlers2x 750ml flip-top glass bottles3x 1L screw-top bottles from the kit.

Next up is probably a cider that I got to satisfy the GF's tastebuds, then an all-malt witte.

I figure I'll go with extract brewing with the Mr beer for the summer, then try to upgrade in the fall.

I've never had much success getting a growler to carbonate without it getting...funky.

On a serious note, have you checked out the outlet in the garage--if the wires live, you could replace the outlet for < $5.

I have no electrical knowledge or skills whatsoever, so no. The only things I've done so far is use a voltage meter to see if any current was coming through while flicking every nearby light switch I could.

On a serious note, have you checked out the outlet in the garage--if the wires live, you could replace the outlet for < $5.

I have no electrical knowledge or skills whatsoever, so no. The only things I've done so far is use a voltage meter to see if any current was coming through while flicking every nearby light switch I could.

Do you have access to the breaker panel? Do you know anyone that is inclined? Electricians love beer.

It doesn't quite jibe with this thread, but I just ordered bottles to put away a batch of limoncello I made. It's about a liter and a half of Everclear, and the zest of about 18 organic lemons, as well as about a few navel oranges. It's have been steeping in sealed jars for about a year now, buried in the back of my hall closet. Now I have to strain it, measure the volume, and do a 50/50 dilution with simple syrup. It'll still be a bit hot, but that van be remedies in glass with some filtered water on a per user basis.

awesome. liquers are on the list of 'someday' for me.

Right now, I have the first batch from my Mr. Beer bottled and undergoing carbonation. the kit came with (8) 1L bottles, but I used a mix: 2x 64oz growlers2x 750ml flip-top glass bottles3x 1L screw-top bottles from the kit.

Next up is probably a cider that I got to satisfy the GF's tastebuds, then an all-malt witte.

I figure I'll go with extract brewing with the Mr beer for the summer, then try to upgrade in the fall.

I've never had much success getting a growler to carbonate without it getting...funky.

honestly, I wouldn't mind. I'm not sure if I'd want to drink a growler of that stuff anyway

Whether it is bottled pressure, regulators, or quality of fuel, the burners don't work. I'm still going to be looking for alternatives but have purchased stove top materials in the meantime. Considering that it takes 2-4 weeks for things to arrive down here, I need to plan far ahead. I already fear that my materials will have spoiled by the time I get to use them. Never give up hope though!!

My first liqueur bottling. So far, I have three bottles of limoncello, two of arancello (orange), and one of pompalmocello (grapefruit). I have about a little less than a bottle's worth of diluted orange and grapefruit, and about three of undiluted lemon, so I need to order more bottles. I ran out of white sugar also, so I'll need some for some more simple syrup, to dilute the rest of the lemon. Then I'll start the next batches. More lemon, and maybe some savory stuff, like horseradish, peppercorn, habanero, and anything else I can think of.

Brewed 5 gallons of Cherry smoked Russian Imperial Stout last night with Golden Promise as the base malt, chocolate, chocolate wheat, roasted barley, black patent, molasses and D-90 candi syrup last night. I smoked 4 of the 16lbs of Golden in my smoker with cherry wood a couple of weeks ago, and boiled a lb of cherries and will add two more to the secondary. Should be around 10.5%, and am going to cellar it on toasted oak that's been soaking up bourbon for a few weeks. Today I'm brewing 20 gallons of a different RIS with Maris Otter as the base malt that's destined to spend a year in an Apple Brandy oak barrel friends and I obtained from a local distillery. We're each brewing a slightly different RIS, Maris for mine, Golden for another, and 2-Row for the third, with the same specialty grains and will blend them into the barrel after secondary and allow it to age. This will be a long day, but the payoff (as far off as it might be) will be pretty awesome I think.

What are the smallest batches someone can brew before things get twitchy/unreliable? I'm thinking of trying to do a lot of different gluten free beers in 2 liter bottles.Even better is I found a force carbonator in my basement so this stuff could get bulk tested as soon as fermentation is done, by celiacs afflicted friend.

My theory is that the FAIL that has been most gluten free beer, is that they are trying to imitate rice beer. If I make a smokey cherry porter the lack of barley will be less noticeable.

What are the smallest batches someone can brew before things get twitchy/unreliable? I'm thinking of trying to do a lot of different gluten free beers in 2 liter bottles.Even better is I found a force carbonator in my basement so this stuff could get bulk tested as soon as fermentation is done, by celiacs afflicted friend.

What are the smallest batches someone can brew before things get twitchy/unreliable? I'm thinking of trying to do a lot of different gluten free beers in 2 liter bottles.Even better is I found a force carbonator in my basement so this stuff could get bulk tested as soon as fermentation is done, by celiacs afflicted friend.

What style yeast? If you go too small you could end up overpitching.

I hadn't even gotten that far, I was just wondering if I can brew in 2 liter bottles. I figured less throw away of revolting failures on the way to success.

What are the smallest batches someone can brew before things get twitchy/unreliable? I'm thinking of trying to do a lot of different gluten free beers in 2 liter bottles.Even better is I found a force carbonator in my basement so this stuff could get bulk tested as soon as fermentation is done, by celiacs afflicted friend.

What style yeast? If you go too small you could end up overpitching.

I hadn't even gotten that far, I was just wondering if I can brew in 2 liter bottles. I figured less throw away of revolting failures on the way to success.

Don't use those. If you want to make small batches, look at getting a 1.5 gal growler instead. That's about as small as you can reasonably get.

What are the smallest batches someone can brew before things get twitchy/unreliable? I'm thinking of trying to do a lot of different gluten free beers in 2 liter bottles.Even better is I found a force carbonator in my basement so this stuff could get bulk tested as soon as fermentation is done, by celiacs afflicted friend.

What style yeast? If you go too small you could end up overpitching.

I hadn't even gotten that far, I was just wondering if I can brew in 2 liter bottles. I figured less throw away of revolting failures on the way to success.

The only real concerns with overpitching is the lack of phenol/ester production you would notice from a specific strain of yeast (ie the banana/clove notes from Hefe yeast), but you can use a yeast calculator to calculate how much you need http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html. You'd definitely need to be careful with your measurements of fermentables as at that small a volume even a few ounces difference would make a huge difference, but I don't see why it'd be any different scaling down as scaling up. Here's a pretty good article on that in fact from BYO magazine http://www.byo.com/stories/techniques/a ... le-brewing They are doing 1 gallon batches, I assume because it's the standard growler size, but smaller is smaller.

What are the smallest batches someone can brew before things get twitchy/unreliable? I'm thinking of trying to do a lot of different gluten free beers in 2 liter bottles.Even better is I found a force carbonator in my basement so this stuff could get bulk tested as soon as fermentation is done, by celiacs afflicted friend.

What style yeast? If you go too small you could end up overpitching.

I hadn't even gotten that far, I was just wondering if I can brew in 2 liter bottles. I figured less throw away of revolting failures on the way to success.

Don't use those. If you want to make small batches, look at getting a 1.5 gal growler instead. That's about as small as you can reasonably get.

Ah! I went to the grocery store to get gallons of cider and use those bottles... only to find cider is now only sold in plastic

Sunday night I bottled my second Mr Beer Batch (their Whispering Weizen or something; can't remember at the moment). Instead of adding sugar to the individual bottles (a pain in the ass, even though I only had (12) 22oz bottles), I made it into a simple syrup and mixed it into the beer in the fermenter. I only let it sit for 5-10 minutes, so I'm somewhat concerned that I didn't let it go long enough (most directions I've seen call for 30 minutes). Oh well - we'll see this weekend.

Last week I took advantage of the Midwest Supplies Groupon and the kit was delivered today. Now I just need to acquire a kettle and I'll be able to do my first 5-gal batch.

I was a little hesitant to order the kit, but making this chart convinced me. I assumed $20/batch for mr beer ingredients and $30/batch for the 5-gallon version. I assumed base cost for the 5-gallon setup was $105 (maybe a slight underestimate - dependent on a kettle being under $40) and that the first two batches were included (since one came with the kit and I have a gift certificate for another). the Mr beer 'ingredients' line probably should have started at $0 since the ingredients for the first batch were included with the kit at $20, but. . . F that. I also didn't take bottles into account, since I figure they cost the same regardless of the batch size.

Sunday night I bottled my second Mr Beer Batch (their Whispering Weizen or something; can't remember at the moment). Instead of adding sugar to the individual bottles (a pain in the ass, even though I only had (12) 22oz bottles), I made it into a simple syrup and mixed it into the beer in the fermenter. I only let it sit for 5-10 minutes, so I'm somewhat concerned that I didn't let it go long enough (most directions I've seen call for 30 minutes). Oh well - we'll see this weekend.

Don't stress this. I generally just stir the corn sugar in about 10 minutes before bottling myself and rarely have an issue with uneven carbonation or bottle bombs.

DJ Immortal wrote:

Last week I took advantage of the Midwest Supplies Groupon and the kit was delivered today. Now I just need to acquire a kettle and I'll be able to do my first 5-gal batch.

I was a little hesitant to order the kit, but making this chart convinced me. I assumed $20/batch for mr beer ingredients and $30/batch for the 5-gallon version. I assumed base cost for the 5-gallon setup was $105 (maybe a slight underestimate - dependent on a kettle being under $40) and that the first two batches were included (since one came with the kit and I have a gift certificate for another). the Mr beer 'ingredients' line probably should have started at $0 since the ingredients for the first batch were included with the kit at $20, but. . . F that. I also didn't take bottles into account, since I figure they cost the same regardless of the batch size.

For a full five gallon boil you'll want something in the 7+ gallon range. This allows room for a vigorous boil and the foam expansion you'll get during the boil. You'll probably want to expand your budget a little bit there, as you'll have a hard time finding a kettle over 7 gallons for under 65 bucks (before shipping). Rebel Brewing and Midwest both have decent options in the $70 range sans ports/bulkheads though.

Asain cooking supply stores. I think "Stove Crusher" may have run ~45$ and I can do 16+ gallons in it.

Quote:

I also didn't take bottles into account, since I figure they cost the same regardless of the batch size.

For bottles I went to the liquor store and asked them if I could pay the deposit on returnables that had been returned and use them for brewing. They though this was a cool idea and so I walked out with several cases of bottles for cheap. After washing out the chew/cigarette butts/ , cleaning the labels off them and then sanitizing, I had a nice set of bottles for a way better price than buying them at the brew supply place. I gave them to another friend who brews when I decided to go keg only in the future.

Yup. I remember one barleywine ale batch I made a few years back, the bill was about $140 for a 5-gallon batch.

I'm still not sure how we did it, but we managed to use 55lbs of grains to make that brew, PLUS 10 lbs of DME. and had 4oz of hops, and had 2 different yeast strains (champagne yeast for a 2nd pitching to get it to higher AC).

We ended up at about 14%ABV, and even then it took 6 months of just sitting in the bottle to really smooth it out.

Cool chart. Also, money, while definitely on the side of larger batches, can easily explode out of the boundaries you set.

God help you if you get a taste for high hop and gravity beers, or god forbid, all grains made from the finest European continental malts. You can easily pass $60 on a IIPA.

I'm not an IPA fan, but I do love Belgians, both dark and light. The chart really only needs to go out to about 5 batches - I figure by then I'll be buying extra carboys to ferment additional batches and the equipment cost per bottle will go up. It also doesn't account for a wort chiller. It was just an exercise to confirm what I already suspected and put numbers on it.

Two friends and I finished the first part of our collaboration stout. Each of us used similar recipes, though all with different base malt (one each with Maris, Golden Promise, and Two-Row) and one of my friends refused to use black patent malt, so went Carafa 2 and 3 instead. The differences were subtle, and interesting. Each ended up around 13% or so, and then were blended together into an Apple Brandy barrel we picked up from a local distillery. Now we wait.

I'm starting to plan out my graduation from a Mr. Beer kit to a real set up, and I'm wondering if anyone here brews 2.5 or 3 gallon batches instead of 5 gallon batches. The 2.5 gal Mr. Beer size is about right for my level of consumption, and would allow me to try out more recipes, and I also don't have a 5+ gallon stock pot. Is it feasible to get all of the equipment for 5 gal batches, but then just cut the recipes in half and do 2.5 gal batches instead?

I talked to a friend who has more experience at this than I do and he said not to worry about using a 5 gallon bucket for primary fermentation with a half batch, and to just make sure I get a 3 gallon carboy if I need a secondary, or to just use the Mr. Beer keg as a secondary in a pinch. Could I make that work, or should I really be aiming for 5 gallon batches?